Epic announces livestream to reveal "future of Unreal Tournament" on May 8

Be still, my heart. Epic Games vice president Mark Rein has posted the words on Twitter I've been waiting years for: Unreal Tournament is coming back. We don't know what form it will take, but Rein followed up his original tweet "I love Unreal Tournament, so excited for the comeback" with a confirmation—"Yes UT coming back!"—and a link to Epic's Unreal Engine Twitch account , where the future of Unreal Tournament will be revealed Thursday, May 8 at 2PM EST.

I love #UnrealTournament - So excited for the comeback! https://t.co/r6Off7DvcM More next week! pic.twitter.com/w4AvpiUkox May 2, 2014

Since Epic plans to unveil its plans for Unreal Tournament on the Unreal Engine Twitch channel, and not the Epic Games channel , we can make a few guesses about the game. It may be a showpiece for Unreal Engine 4 in the way Gears of War was for Unreal Engine 3. It may simply be a tech demo for Unreal Engine 4 and not a full game. Wouldn't that be a drag.

Another tweet from Epic's Paul Meegan makes us think this is more than a throwaway project. "UE4 Dev Community + Epic. The future of Unreal Tournament," he tweeted:

UE4 Dev Community + Epic. The future of Unreal Tournament. Tune in to http://t.co/hPLc5jcZSv Thursday at 2pm ET. #unrealdev #FirstBlood May 2, 2014

The future of Unreal Tournament could be on consoles or—dare I say it—mobile. Don't make us play Unreal Tournament on iPhones, Epic. Don't you dare. Give us a new game on PC, whether it's a Quake Live-style update of classic UT or a Unreal Engine 4 juggernaut.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As hardware editor, Wes spends slightly more time building computers than he does breaking them. Deep in his heart he believes he loves Star Wars even more than Samuel Roberts and Chris Thursten, but is too scared to tell them.